Electronic circuits are in many cases manufactured as chips where one or more semiconductor integrated circuits are packaged in a chip housing, wherein such a chip housing usually has a plurality of pins extending therefrom. The pins serve as terminals for the integrated circuit within the package, for example as input terminals, output terminals or terminals for voltage supply. In general, costs for manufacturing such a chip comprising a packaged semiconductor integrated circuit increases with increasing number of pins.
On the other hand, semiconductor integrated circuits sometimes comprise circuit elements having a certain tolerance. For example, a semiconductor integrated circuit may comprise one or more resistors made of polysilicon. To calibrate such internal circuit elements, i.e. to adjust them to a desired nominal value, external circuit elements, i.e. circuit elements which are connected to one or more of the pins of the semiconductor chip, which external circuit elements are manufactured with lower tolerance than the internal circuit elements, may be used. Obviously, for such a calibration corresponding pins are necessary for coupling the external circuit element to the semiconductor chip.